1. Field of the Invention
The invention relates to a receiver for receiving reception signals of a first type, for example, TV signals, and reception signals of a second type, for example, FM-radio signals. The invention also relates to a multi-media apparatus incorporating such a receiver. The receiver may enhance the functionality of the multi-media apparatus with, for example, TV and FM-radio reception. The multimedia apparatus may be in the form of a personal computer (PC) having slots in which add-on cards are plugged. The receiver may be implemented on one of these add-on cards. Accordingly, the PC can access information transmitted by FM-radio and TV stations.
2. Description of the Related Art
A receiver capable of receiving TV and FM-radio signals is described in U.S. Pat. No. 5,148,420. In the prior-art receiver, both TV and FM-radio signals are supplied to a single tuner via a common RF input. The single tuner converts a particular reception signal to a fixed intermediate frequency (IF) of approximately 40 MHz, which is common for TV reception. The IF signal produced by the tuner is processed differently for TV or FM-radio reception. For TV reception, the IF signal is processed in a manner which is very similar to IF signal processing in most present-day TV receivers. For FM-radio reception, the IF signal is supplied to a single chip FM-radio integrated circuit (IC) via a filter unit. In the FM-radio IC, the IF signal is frequency-converted to obtain a nominal 10.7 MHz FM IF signal, which is further processed in a common manner.
Although the prior-art receiver is capable of retrieving information from both TV and FM-radio signals received at the common RIF input, the prior-art receiver has a relatively low flexibility.